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Supreme giraffe should only need to talk to the platoon leaders I think

So if he told platoon lead 1 to attack 2 bases, it'd be up to the platoon lead to split the squads how they saw fit and report progress back up. With that the platoon lead could ask for a big attack on base A and smaller ones on B and C and the actual logistics of which squad goes where aren't in his hands.

Basically a slightly bigger chain of command that doesn't put too much pressure on any individual.

[edit] Also thanks to all who took charge and led people and a welcome to any new peeps sniffing around :3

All in all, I have to say that I think we did very well last night. Sure there were some ghost caps in the beginning, efficiency was not at peak capacity and there wasn't really any information about what the other platoons were doing (this is my speaking as a normal grunt).

But it was also the first time we did something like this and there were a lot of new people playing who either weren't familiar with the game, or the way the outfit plays. Almost half the squad I was in were "non-veterans" and we still managed to work together as a group, including taking and holding points, for most of the evening. So sure, maybe things weren't as they COULD have been, but they were quite frankly as good as could be expected.

So, that being said, we managed to take a lot of territory (over 50 % of the map at some point), we had some truly epic fights (Silver Valley, Auraxis Firearms, etc.) and as a whole I think we got most people cooperating and working together. So I think we did really good.

Just wanted to say thanks to Cooper, Dr Barnowl, Grible and others for looking after us noobs last night. It was my first time fighting in an outfit since the Beta, and it was great to feel like I was fighting as part of a squad rather than just being in one. I look forward to more nights like this in the future.

It was my first time fighting in an outfit since the Beta, and it was great to feel like I was fighting as part of a squad rather than just being in one. I look forward to more nights like this in the future.

Oh my, squad coordination makes a world of difference. For me, this is what has me coming back to the game again and again. Playing without squad voice comms or in pick-up groups just doesn't suffice.

I had great fun last night in CMaster's squad, is was a little sluggish at times but new blood is always needed and it won't take that long for people to get up to speed. That tower fight was truly epic with our Sunderer charge totally messed up by the server restart!!!

Regards,

PurpleSnow.

Haha I was manning the grenade launcher for that Light Brigade-esque charge.

My mic wasn't working so I couldn't really get involved properly, but that was probably the most fun i've had playing Planetside 2. Thanks to all the leaders for their work.

Yeah playing Ps2 solo is just... a bad game there are alot better games if you just wanna shoot some people in the face. But get in a outfit, especially an outfit that works with other outfits to stage big attacks on an entire continent Then there really is no other game that gives an experience like it. (well except for Eve then...)

Thanks too to the dozens of new people who turned up. It was a wonderfully hectic night.

One thing: Next time we get 100+ we need an overlord. Someone who is probably not actually 'playing' but is sitting in command chat, has direct connection to every PL, and is basically telling us what to do and who can regularly speak to all of us to let us know the "grand plan".

One thing I think we didn't do too well was get across quite how what we were doing on the ground filtered into the efforts of hundreds of people playing. Partly because we weren't necessarily working that well on a strategic level to actually know really what we were doing on that large-scale...

There was limited inter-platoon coordination, probably because all PLs were busier than normal with platoon "admin". There was zero inter-outfit cooperation, but I did give The Vanu Accord a heads up on that likely being the case. Both of these could be solved by someone pulling an "enrico" and playing gentle general for the empire that night. Empire orders were rarely used, it would have been nice to have shown [RPS] leading coordination across all Vanu on Miller as we often do...

Apart from the disconnect between "on the ground" and strategic empire-level stuff (which, to be honest, we are usually much better at than anyone else) it went incredibly well.

We were never going to be an efficient fighting force nor anywhere near as flexible and responsive as we usually are. Which is totally fine, because what we did have was still bloody impressive stuff. I did my best to try and get in a mix of styles from Gal drops to magriders in my platoon, if sometimes at the detriment of being particulalry effective (a platoon of magriders without a fight and nowhere to go but a biolab was a bit embarassing...). I like to think we offered a really good night to the new players.

If anything, one of the best things about the RPS community (in general, not just PS2 players) really, really shone through last night. I am continually amazed at just how excellent everyone is. Really. We had almost zero 'problem characters' and everyone was incredibly friendly, and I think we managed to be much more welcoming. Entering into an established community can be daunting, and sometimes alienating. I think we managed really well in that regards.

One person can't coordinate 10 squads. That is impossible. We need to learn to work as independent groups in cohesion via sheer knowledge of where we are on the map, as well as leaders communicating where they are, as well as PL telling their platoon overall directions and goals. It should then mainly be up to SLs to figure out how. This is in my book the difference between PL and SL and I think we should stress that SLs need to be more independent. PL should act as the coordinator, not the one who decides angles of approach and tactics - but strategy.

If we have multiple platoons, we really should use my proposed comms system. In that we should also have PLs talking to eachother a la "pl1 going here. pl2 go there?" "sure pl1" - nothing logner, no discussion, nothing complicated - unless we have downtime. Easy cooperation. We should then have comms liason (who has no other responisbility other then necessary beacon jockey duty in the squad that person is SL in, but is not actually leading) doing direct input to PLs to coordinate on the larger stage.

We still discuss stuff way too much in command chat when we should not be. SLs should be able to focus on squad leading. Not filtering audio. I would see this is as our number one reason why we have issues getting squads sticking together and such - that SLs are pre-occupied with other duties.

On topic, I had a great time yesterday. Big thanks to all of you that pulled this together! Being so many RPSers had a very epic feel to it, especially the push for Silver Valley and Splitpeak Pass, and the assault on Sungrey Amp. Great fights and lots of galdrop practice in Stratgir Charlie.

Maybe the problem is not Overlording but at the squadleading level.
Essentialy squad leaders are squadleading and manning the "radio" at the same time. Squads should have a tactical officer (leading the squad and deciding how to act on the terrain) and a second player should be a radio officer being in charge of handling communications with platoon leader and other squads. So the squadleader can focus on... squad leading, while the comm officer can radio talk and admin all of this. Those two people could train to work together in order to be most effective.

An exemple could be this:
Platoon leaders channel:
Platoon 1 leader: Platoon 1 is pushing from the north, Platoon 2 can you cover west flank while we advance?
Platoon 2 leader: ok, we are taking position in the mountain.

Platoon 2 channel:
Platoon 2 leader: We are holding the west flank in the moutains. Alpha you take position on the moutain facing west. Beta will get to hold the pass. Delta will serve as backup. And Gamma will provide air support.

Delta squad channel:
Delta comm officer: We have to provide backup for alpha that will hold the mountain and for beta that will hold the pass.
Delat squad leader: okay, the moutain is too steep for a sunderer, we will use a galaxy in order to respond quickly.

Gamma squad channel:
Gamma comm officer: We have to provide air support for alpha that will hold the moutain and for beta that will hold the pass.
Gamma Squad Leader: okay, we are going in three liberators and three air to air scythes to cover us. Don't forget to get at least one engineer in each aircraft.

Thanks to Nick for repeating orders many, many times. We were bantering non-stop and though I did explain why people occasionally had to shut up I didn't labour the point. I would like to know if this was problematic for Nick and whether I should enforce more radio discipline in future, so as not to cause chaos for the brass. And thanks to CMaster for nudging us in the right direction, without any name-calling, tautologous though that might have been! I did need it pointed out to me

I get the impression that the chiefs had trouble controlling such a large force but on the smaller scale I found we were more disciplined than usual but - at least in the squads I was in - without the silence that normally characterises Strat nights. For me this is the most enjoyable way to play, whether or not we lock the continent.

I had a blast with my Bravo squad, i think i had mostly new guys at least new to RPS if not to the game which meant we were a bit short on AMS sunderers a while but that did not have any major impact on our game. I tried to be as active a leader as i could by giving us smaller objectives in the bigger fight (like the vehicle terminal in silver valley). I realise I might not have been clear enough with certain things to the new guys and I was pretty bad at trying to gather the squad for attacks so that we often ended up spread out over battles. But I do hope the new guys had fun and want to play with us again.

The biggest change from having veterans to new players is the lack of AA, sure everyone has 1 burster but they do lack the oomphf of a double burster and new guys are not as quick to pull them out if needed. Killing tanks we had no problems with as shown outside Split peaks when we jump out of our sundie and had the whole squad change to heavies in less than 10 seconds and sending a barrage of rockets at the lightnings trying to hold us back. That was really impressive actually.

I did have quite a few guys who did not use mics/did not have mics which made it slightly harder to have a good conversation and intro with them but think we did good anyway.

Mad props to the entire outfit for keeping this together and actually managing to keep it as smooth as it was. Sure the 2nd platoon was a bit slow to get rolling and could have used a few more veterans but once we got rolling we always had something to do even if it was just capping empty TR bases.

I really do agree with Ridebird though, squads really should take the initiative and instead of asking the PL "What do we do now? Give us orders!!!" just go "Hey Alpha is moving to this base to help flank the enemy!" and if that is stupid or wrong the PL can just tell you what he needs instead.

PS2 is notorious for being really CPU intensive and the patch that came just before the event made this even worse which I am sure did make the game less enjoyable that it could have been for many new players. There was a hotfix after the event that is supposed to have helped a but otherwhise there are tweak guides for settings that will bump the graphics while at the same time reducing the load on cpu.

Maybe the problem is not Overlording but at the squadleading level.
Essentialy squad leaders are squadleading and manning the "radio" at the same time. Squads should have a tactical officer (leading the squad and deciding how to act on the terrain) and a second player should be a radio officer being in charge of handling communications with platoon leader and other squads. So the squadleader can focus on... squad leading, while the comm officer can radio talk and admin all of this. Those two people could train to work together in order to be most effective.

An exemple could be this:
...

I really like this idea! Put the comms officer in SL channel and the executive officer (SL in-game) among the other guys in the channel. If we combine this with setting PLs as priority speakers, then the comms officer in each squad won't have problems hearing their PL. The good thing about this is, we could trial this while doing a regular squad-play/stratgir session!

Ridebird, I'd be up for trying this with you some time, in either role, if you're up for it.